Douglas Wissing
Ultimate Swords to Plowshares
Douglas Wissing is an award-winning journalist and author who has been embedded with a National Guard Agribusiness Development Team (ADT) in Afghanistan. This small, elite team of farmer-soldiers is attempting to help Afghan farmers in Khost Province, an insurgency-wracked province on the Pakistan border. Because of their hybrid combat-development composition and high-profile mission, this team provides an extraordinary window into many aspects of this complicated and changing war.
While in Afghanistan, Wissing has covered everything from combat situations and village shuras (meetings) with tribal leaders and Taliban-tainted provincial officials to technocrats in Kabul and frontline dog-and-pony shows for Special Representative Holbrooke's envoys. He's witnessed the frustrations and tempered triumphs of development in Afghanistan up close and personal.
As the Obama administration debates a development-heavy counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, the subject of aid is increasingly important to the American public. Glib soundbites from Washington often fail to include the on-the-ground reality of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Wissing's coverage puts human faces on critical issues.
Douglas Wissing has contributed to publications that include The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Independent on Sunday (UK), Forbes Life, National Geographic Traveler, Travel + Leisure, ARTnews, Saveur, Gray's Sporting Journal, Asia Times and Salon.com. Wissing wrote and produced "Cultivating Afghanistan", a 15-part radio series on the Indiana National Guard Agribusiness Development Team. He is the author of Pioneer in Tibet: The Life and Perils of Dr. Albert Shelton, which covered the early Western exploration of Tibet and the explorer who introduced Tibet to America. In recognition of Wissing's research in Tibet, the Royal Geographical Society named him a Fellow.
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